Decades ago, I visited Caesarea, Israel, and was moved by the “spirits in the stones” of the people—Romans, Byzantines, Crusaders, Moslems, Turks, Jews—who had lived and died on that very ground on the shores of the Mediterranean. I could feel their presence in the tumbled stones and the fragments of walls, which led me to weave the Ghost Image Series, six tapestries.

Four years ago, I again walked along the beach beside Caesarea, revisiting this ancient archeological site which is slowly being excavated. Now, though, I found the spirituality of the place desecrated by the bits of plastic intermingled with seashells and stones. Over the centuries, the site had seen invaders come and go over; they had built imposing edifices that could crumble into dust and be reabsorbed by nature, but today’s plastic will take millennia to disintegrate. I added a feather as my call to attention, a remnant of my dead birds, a reminder of the fragility of the ecosystem. We are all detritus thrown up on the beach.